


Alphabet Games

by juliasets



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Pre-Series, Slice of Life, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-13 11:37:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17487374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliasets/pseuds/juliasets
Summary: It's the beginning of summer, 1994. The isolated cabin in the north woods is quiet, aside from John's snores. Dean and Sam whisper to each other through the dark. Responsibility weighs on Dean as he considers that night, and the months ahead.





	Alphabet Games

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to post something for Dean's birthday and I realized that this fic, which has been sitting on my hard drive for a while, was perfect for the occasion. 
> 
> Thank you to [interstitial](https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstitial/) for beta-ing and attempting to untangle my tenses.
> 
> Happy 40th Birthday, Dean Winchester!

Dean let Sam have the top bunk because he decided that he’s too old to find the top bunk fun anymore. That, and he wasn’t sure the rickety structure would support his weight. The upper bunk doesn’t even has real railings, just a long hunk of reject lumber nailed to the bedposts along the outer side. The other side is pressed up against the wall, but there’s space enough to slide down into the lower bed. At first Dean was afraid that Sam, always the restless sleeper, would roll over and slip through that space, falling on Dean in his sleep. But after Sam climbed in the first night it was clear from the deep sag in the springs that his little brother wouldn’t be rolling anywhere. There’s no ladder and the entire frame sways drunkenly every time Sam climbs up the footboards. The cabin they’re holed up in is in the north woods of Wisconsin, a hunting cabin probably designed more for hunting deer than monsters. It only has one bedroom, but at least it has indoor plumbing. Small mercies.

Next to the bunk bed is a single queen that John sleeps on, in between them and the door. It’s cramped and their dad’s whiskey snores keep them up late into the night. They play word games, whispered up and down the wall next to the bunk bed.

“My name is Andrew and I came from Ann Arbor on an airplane,” Dean starts.

There’s a long stretch of quiet, but Dean knows that his brother is awake because he knows how Sammy sounds when he sleeps, even from down here. Sam’s only eleven, but he’s learned how to get on John’s last nerve before he’s figured out how to pick his battles.

That’s what happened tonight. Dean had tried to deflect some of the fight, but the cabin was too small and John was too far into a bottle of Old Thompson to care. John’s first swing was a wild, glancing blow off Sam’s head. Fortunately John was also drunk enough that he didn’t get a second shot in before Dean hustled his brother out into the summer twilight.

Take your brother outside. Keep Sammy safe. Standing instructions Dean feels rattling somewhere in his bone marrow.

“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean whispers.

He hears Sam try to even out his breathing, but when his voice is still a little scratchy when he speaks. They’d been good when they came back into the cabin, but Sam always thinks too much when he should be going to sleep. “My name is… Bobby. And I came from B-Boston.” There’s a quiet hitch in his breath before he rushes the rest of it out. “On a boat.”

“Good luck getting a boat here.” Sam hums a little in lieu of a laugh, but it’s something. “Well my name is Chris and I came from Cincinnati in a car. No, wait, a Chevy Impala.”

“You got all the easy ones,” Sam whisper-whines.

“Perks of starting the game, shrimp.”

There’s a fire pit fifty feet from the cabin with a half-decayed wooden picnic table. When they’d gone out there tonight the whip-poor-wills had been calling out out as Dean stacked logs from the woodpile, got the fire going with his Zippo, and used a long stick to poke it into some semblance of order. The sun had been setting, leeching some of the summer heat out of the air, but it was still comfortable, the fire more for light than for warmth. They were far enough from civilization that there was none of the orange glow of light pollution or neon glow from motel signs they were accustomed to. Nights at the cabin got dark. When a breeze picked up the leaves of the poplar trees rustled and flashed silver in the dying light. The patch of sky visible through the treetops slowly filled with stars.

They sat out there for hours. Sam pointed out the few constellations that he knew: the big and little dippers, which he called Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, because he was an irrepressible dork. Dean’s favorite: Orion the Hunter, with his trademark belt. Sam had tried to find Cassiopeia, but he couldn’t tell which set of stars formed her “w”. Dean created a few constellations of his own, all of them lewd, until Sam was giggling. By the time they let the fire burn down and returned to the cabin John was passed out in his bed. Dean grabbed their pajamas and they got dressed crowded in the tiny bathroom, jostling for position around the sink as they brushed their teeth. By only the starlight shining through the window they carefully navigated around John’s bed to their bunk.

“My name is Dave and I came from Davenport on a…” there’s a long pause as Sam thinks, “On a… dog.”

Dean grins up at the top bunk through the dark. “I guess that might work for you, midget.”

“Shut up.”

“Fine. My name is Edgar and I came from El Paso on an emu.”

Sam’s giggles pierce the quiet of the bedroom and Dean instinctively freezes as John’s snores cut off with a grunt. Sam follows a heartbeat later, cutting himself off with a gasp, as the silence of the cabin sits heavy around them. They lay there for a long time until the snores begin again, quieter at first. Dean breathes through the queasy feeling of fading adrenaline.

Sam’s voice is hardly audible when he speaks again. “My name is Francis and I came from Fort Douglas on a ferry.”

Dean’s unease ratchets up. The city part of this game was always the easiest for them, having stopped through more cities and towns in America than most adults. But not all those places have great memories. To Sam, Fort Douglas had been just another cruddy motel with cartoons and the last of the Lucky Charms. To Dean, it was coming home and seeing a monster crouched over his baby brother, one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

“Francis? Really?” he teases, voice thin. He takes a breath and considers before smiling into the darkness. “My name is… Gary,” he says, pausing for emphasis. “And I come from… Gary.” He gets the muffled laugh he was aiming for. Sometimes Sam’s easy like that. “On a giraffe.”

“My name is Harry and I came from Harrisburg on a hippo.”

“Not a horse?”

“Nope..”

“Weird. Well, my name is Irwin and I came from Indianapolis in the Impala.”

“We came from Minnesota, _Irwin,”_ Sam corrects and Dean can hear him grinning.

“Shut up and play the game, _Francis.”_

“My name is Jim and I came from Jacksonville in a jet.”

“My name is Ken and I came from Kansas City on a kangaroo. No, in a kangaroo. In the pouch.”

Sam’s giggles are quiet and John snores on, dead to the world. Sam’s silent for a stretch. “My name is Larry and I came from… Lawrence. In a limo.”

Dean’s first reaction is anger, quick and hot. They don’t talk about Lawrence. They don’t talk about Mom or Before. Sam knows better. This is what Sam does, what he always does, pokes at things that hurt because he doesn’t understand. Because Sam doesn’t remember their house in Lawrence so he can’t remember watching it all go up in flames.

For a moment, not even a second, Dean lets himself imagine what could’ve been. Imagines being in this cabin with his family whole. Imagines playing this game with his mom and brother as they tried to ignore his dad’s snores, which were just normal snores, not the result of half a handle of whiskey. Imagines giggling as Mary came up with increasingly ridiculous answers. Her name is Mary and she came from the moon on a motorboat. It’s less of a thought, more of a feeling, there for an instant and close enough to touch.

His dad gives a particularly loud snort and Dean snaps back. Back to the run down cabin in the middle of nowhere and his passed-out drunk of a father and the brother whose safety he can’t guarantee. Not from monsters, not from hunting, and not from John. Dean hadn’t grabbed anything but his brother earlier, so there had been no ice or frozen vegetables to press against the bruise stretched across Sam’s temple as they sat in the growing dark.

He takes a deep, silent breath. “My name is Marvin and I came from Milwaukee on a motorcycle.”

They’re spending the whole summer in this cabin. They’re going to be training so that Sam can be ready to tag along on more hunts. Sam, who’s nothing but awkward, spindly limbs and shaggy hair. He’s been on a couple hunts already, just routine salt and burns. Dean knows that he went on hunts when he was Sam’s age, even a couple when he was younger. But there's no way that Dean was as small and vulnerable as Sam is at eleven.

“My name is Nick and I came from New Orleans on a… a… nimbus?”

“The hell is that?”

“It’s a type of cloud,” Sam replies.

“Points for creativity, but I don’t think it counts.”

“Fine then, in a Nissan.”

“Even worse, buddy. Dad’s gonna kill you for not buying American,” Dean jokes, but immediately wishes he could take it back in the silence that follows. John’s often a sore spot, but especially tonight. He should’ve said Uncle Bobby. He scrambles to fill the silence. “Well my name is Owen and I came from Omaha on a… on a…” he reaches, but nothing comes to mind. Stupid ‘O’.

“On an orca?” Sam suggests.

“A what?”

“A killer whale. That’s the other name for them.”

“Like Free Willy?” Dean thinks for a moment. “I guess that’d be cool. Yeah, on an orca.”

Crisis averted.

Despite it having been John’s idea that they spend the summer training, he didn’t seem happy about it. They’d only been here four days, and John had spent every evening blind drunk. Dean thinks some of it was due to the fight his father had with Pastor Jim before they left Blue Earth, Minnesota. Sam and Dean hadn’t been privy to that—they’d been sent off to target shoot in the woods—but Dean knows it happened because when John came to collect them he’d been fuming. Their bags had already been packed into the Impala. Jim had tried to say good-bye to Sam and Dean, good-bye and maybe something more, but John had blocked him with his whole body, barking out orders for them to get in the car.

Dean had been so thrown by the whirlwind of anger and action that he’d gotten into the back with Sam instead of the passenger seat like he’d insisted on ever since he was old enough. That’s how he knew that Sam had twisted around and levered himself up to watch Pastor Jim fading into the distance out the rear window. Dean had been too busy watching their dad, his whole body attuned to him, his actions, his mood.

Sam’s whisper is getting quieter. “My name is Patrick and I came from Pittsburgh on a pontoon boat.”

“Ugh, ‘Q’,” Dean complains. “My name is Quentin and I came from… I dunno, Quebec? On a… what’s that Aztec guy Bobby told us about?”

“Quetzalcoatl?”

“Yeah, that.”

“My name is Ryan and I came from—what’s that city dad had us study? It’s nearby.”

“Rhinelander.”

“My name is Ryan and I came from Rhinelander in a rail car.”

Dean snorts. “You hobo.”

They’d seen the signs for Rhinelander on their way to this cabin and John had given them some background material on the town. It was home to a famous cryptid, one of the many “fearsome critters” that folklore attributed to the American frontier. Most of them were tall tales or hoaxes, but a couple hunters knew to be real, like the jackalope, though that one wasn’t very dangerous. Others, like the skunk ape or glawackus, were rare, but deadly. John hadn’t said which category he considers the hodag to be in, which could mean he doesn’t know, but more likely it’s another test for Sam and Dean.

If it is real, they’ll probably be hunting it this summer. There had been a picture in the pages John had them study, a bunch of men with old-timey mustaches surrounding a creature the size of a dog. He hopes the real thing doesn’t get bigger than that. “Well my name is Sam and I came from Sarasota on a sailboat.”

“My name is Tom and I came from Topeka in a truck.”

“My name is, ugh, I hate this one.”

“Ulysses.”

“You’re such a nerd.”

“Shut up.”

“Fine, my name is Ulysses and I came from Urbana on a unicycle.”

Dean has to call Sam a nerd, it’s the responsibility of every older brother, but he can’t help the swell of pride in him whenever he thinks about how smart the kid is. Sam only turned eleven a little over a month ago, but he’s already as good at research as Dean is. Maybe better, if only because he clearly enjoys it. Even John tends to be impressed with some of the information Sam is able to find on cases. Dean had been hoping that Sam could stick to research for another couple of years, at least until he was a teenager and hopefully filled out a bit.

But ever since leaving them at Uncle Bobby’s last summer for a month, a month that ended with John on the other end of Bobby’s shotgun, his dad had been increasingly pushing Sam out into the field. John had never been the most social hunter, but this past school year it seemed like he was going it alone more than usual. And now he’d had a fight with Pastor Jim. Something had changed, something that was isolating John and driving him to drink. Dean tried not to think about how long this new status quo could last.

“My name is Vince and I came from Vancouver in a… vehicle?” Sam’s voice is soft as sleep creeps up on him.

“I’ll let it slide.” Dean responds quietly, winding down the game. They need the rest; they’ll be up with the sun tomorrow morning. The windows in the cabin are bare, all the better to wake up with the first rays of sunlight. It’s Dean’s responsibility to get them out and on a short run, probably even before John finishes sleeping off his hangover. “My name is Walt and I came from Washington, D.C. on a whale.”

“My name is Xander and I came from… Xanadu?”

Dean can’t help but laugh a little. “Fine.”

“On a xenomorph,” Sam mumbles. “From Aliens,” he clarifies, cutting off Dean’s question.

“Geek,” Dean teases fondly. “My name is, uh, Young Frankenstein.” He waits for Sam to correct him, but obviously sleep is winning the battle in the upper bunk. “I came from Yonkers on a yacht.”

He waits, but the only response from Sam is soft, even breathing that he can just make out between his dad’s snores.

Dean pulls the sheet up around his ears. He needed to get some sleep. It was going to be a long summer.

His name was Zach.

He came from….


End file.
